They have a heart-to-heart conversation in which Ludmila tells him about her lonely joyless life.

Should I have lingered out a joyless life Because the curse of adverse destiny To a mad consort joined my blooming youth?

This was not just his reaction to seeing folk crowding themselves like sheep in a pen, and not only his reaction to the joyless and uncreative lives most of them led.

Mr. Johnson eventually accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and joyless married life.

A dull and joyless life is Tony's fate.

Somewhere in one of the sideboard drawers we had a photograph album, thrust out of sight since we had lost the desire to record our joyless life.

She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured without exertion, and proudly termed patience.

He contrasts the poet's humanity and breadth with the shrunken, joyless lives of the next generation.

Jean-Luc is a lost boy in a man's joyless overachieving life when his father finds him again.

Aygül and Cemal live a joyless life, stuck in an unhappy marriage with four children.